Category — Margot

Works of art such as this one by Giulio Romano, don’t make me think of that time after the dark ages, don’t make me think of knights or blossoming science.  It makes me think about beauty.  It makes me think about how beauty has changed with the passing years, how it’s different for each person, each continent each era. Especially with the female image. [Read more →]

When he walked into the room, Jeff Mermelstien exuded an air of nervousness.  He kept his head down and said little as he surveyed the small class and edged his tall body toward the back.  The few things he said were calm and bored sounding as he first opened his mouth to introduce himself and to ask for help setting up.  It was as though he had the distinct impression that we as a class were going to verbally attack him and his art at the first possible opening.  He set up his slides and steeled himself for a blank and humorless hour and a half.  He obviously did not realize the kind of class he was dealing with. [Read more →]

I’m always excited for dance performances.  They inspire me, send shivers down my spine and keep me stick straight in anticipation of what comes next.  That is unless they’re bad.  Then I get monumentally disappointed and feel ass though the life was drained out of me during the performance.  I went into the Bush Women performance kind of wary, trying not to get my hopes up too high and because of my fellow students doubt was permeating my usual enthusiasm.  [Read more →]

{slight technical difficulty. just turn your computers 90 degrees}

I like to make pretty things
Involving sharp teeth and butterfly wings
There is a scene of a lovely girl
Blowing balloons around the world
From the picture fantasy sings

Capa’s startling black and white photographs brought out the sympathy that usually resides deep in my being, back by the spine, slick with cynic oil.  I saw the solemn eyes peering between barbed wire and somehow felt chills of recognition down my spine.  [Read more →]

Samuel Freedman, waking one morning, found himself with a purpose.  He had a book to write, a story to share with the world.  He needed to know who his mother was before he had known her.  Who she was before he was.  He went at this story with vigor, researching where most children don’t think to look for their parent’s pasts and delving into his own history.  [Read more →]

[Attempting to upload slideshow]

The photos presented were taken at three separate locations at three different times.  The ones that were taken first are the prominently orange photos, those littered with utility poles and water towers, were taken on the way back from LBI during an early summer sunset.  I gasped at the colors flooding the car and related to my mother how much I love telephone wires.  In response she fished my camera out of the back and handed it over.  I clicked the last of the sun’s fading rays into the memory card and dubbed the collection of blurred telephone wires “pretty jersey” in tribute to New Jersey’s often discounted and ignored beauty.  The set is full of traffic lights and pick-up trucks, the highlight being a perfectly placed water tower, which was well within my camera’s grasp.  [Read more →]

A play about something as gargantuan as the worth of thirteen lives, about their daily narrow escape from death should leave a viewer with some resounding sense of something.  One should be left with a feeling just as huge as the implications of the play.  Yet I left the theatre with nothing more then an appreciative shrug for what Irena did. [Read more →]

The ravaging dogs at the beginning of the film chase you into a story of confusion, a slowly unfurling lick of flame.  It’s a slow paced documentary that keeps your eyeballs nailed to the screen, a rarity.  And with its beautiful animation and mysterious quality Waltz with Bashir is a film that invokes the word awe.  Its stylistic approach to the portrayal of a true story, the story of a man trying to find a past that haunts him with strange dreams gives the film a universal sense.   Beyond that it is a war story, death permeating the screen, bringing you closer to a reality you hope you will never face.  [Read more →]

In a play, there are actors on stage, pretending to be people made up by playwrights and directors, sometimes based off a real person from the past or the present, yet a character nonetheless.  In Conflict had actors pretending to be living, breathing, existing human beings with deep and sometimes dark stories to tell.  People that had served in Iraq and decided to tell all that would listen their stories of hope and betrayal and utter depression.  The actors up on the stage had no choice but to be on top of their game, because the person they were portraying could be out in the audience, or even more stressful, their spouse could be.  And all the actors were on top of their game.  There were some that were better then others, some stories that were more interesting or heartbreaking, and still each person pretending to be a different person was practically who they were pretending to be. [Read more →]